Cell Phone and I’Net? Here’s a Soft Debate

The John and Gary Chronicles

Hi Bill,

I would like to rebut a few of Mr. Ferguson’s comments about TaosNet. As technology has improved and costs have come down, so has TaosNet’s prices. Granted, I cannot compete with subsidized competitors and our prices must reflect the cost of doing business where my revenue must exceed my expenses. I have a payroll to meet for good paying *local* jobs and expenses for backhauling bandwidth to Taos that Century Link does not appear to factor into their prices here in Taos.

Yes, even with our price reductions and offering more speed for the same price, it is still much more than Century Link’s subsidized service but I feel TaosNet offers value that goes far beyond price. When I do the arithmetic, I wonder on what time period your $3000 is based upon. Without knowing the time frame, your comments about the extra cost can be a bit misleading.Regarding your personal situation some years ago and claim of poor service, I seem to recall that most of the problems that you refer to were the result of you having an unsecured WiFi that was being inadvertently shared with your neighbors.

As for Taos Ski Valley, Century Link does *not* have any Internet broadband service to Taos Ski Valley. One can not even get a new T1 to TSV let alone DSL because Century Link facilities to TSV are maxed out, and as far as I know they do not have an interest in investing the money for serving its small permanent population base. TSV is served almost exclusively by a 5 hop wireless link over the mountains by TaosNet for their Internet connectivity.

Because of TaosNet’s investment several years ago in a redundant physical path to the Internet through Alamosa, Colorado, Holy Cross Hospital, the Town of Taos, and Taos County received uninterrupted Internet access throughout the fiber cut event. These organizations provide vital services to our community, a portion of which depend on the Internet.

Your comment about how much cheaper and faster Internet is in other countries fails to mention that the tax rates are much higher in those countries. Someone has to pay for the infrastructure and bandwidth, and in those countries that you refer to it is paid by the government through higher taxes. So people in those countries are actually paying much more that you state. It is just hidden through higher taxes. Just look at gasoline in Europe. I understand that a gallon of gas costs over $8 a gallon in many European countries, mostly because of the high tax rate.

All in all, I do not think TaosNet is “very” expensive for the services we provide. One must look at the whole picture and not take snippets that can give a distorted view.

Sincerely,

John D. Batis

Gary Responds to John’s Previous Post Below:

Hello Bill,

John Batis and the Taosnet team does a remarkable job of providing internet service to the Taos Vicinity and has some redundancy for situations as he proudly boasts.  However, Taosnet is expensive, very expensive. Nonetheless, I think the local service he provides is so important that I kept Taosnet as an ISP even though we did switch the communication service from wireless (256kb/sec) to DSL (about 3-7 Mb/sec) a few years ago.

Now we pay about $10 more/mo for 20X faster service.  We could have switched all both the communication link and the ISP to Qwest and saved far more.   What John fails to mention is “costs”.  For the same level of service, i.e., 3-7 Mb/sec, IIRC the wireless ISP via Taosnet is about twice or more than the cost of DSL/ISP from CL.   CL is currently offering 7Mb/sec DSL/ISP for $20/mo with a landline ($100/mo) for new customers.   If CL continues to have big failures though, maybe it’s worth the extra cost.  If TSV chooses to predicate ticket sales on the internet, that’s a different issue.  The lines into TSV are CL as far as I know.

BTW, wireless systems are not perfect, they fail too.  When I had Taosnet wireless, in our location, we had many, many problems with service.  In hindsight, there were technical problems with this location and security issues that have since been fixed.  WIth DSL, there have been years of reliable service but outages recently.

Just so you know, Internet Service in many countries is regarded as critical infrastructure, like electricity and roads.  These countries take a far different approach and also keep costs very low and data rates, very high… 50Mb/sec is not unusual for about $20/mo.  In France, for instance, this service includes cable TV.

If I got something wrong here, someone will likely write in and correct it. Oh well.  As I write this, DSL is working again and life is a blast.

Thanks, G.

Hi Bill,

I read with interest the letter from Gary Ferguson that you posted to your web site this morning. I would like to point out that the only TaosNet customers that were affected by the outage were our DSL customers. Century Link routes all of our DSL customers to Santa Fe first before switching back to Taos and the aggregated DSL circuit TaosNet has with Century Link. All of our fixed wireless customers and all of our servers, including email and web were *not* affected by this outage. The reason the majority of our customers had uninterrupted service is becasue TaosNet has partnered with an ISP in Alamosa, Colorado, to provide an alternate path to the Internet that does not use the Century Link fiber that connects Taos County to the outside world. See http://www.chileroute.com/ for details.

While Mr. Ferguson is advocating that Century Link do a better job at providing redundancy to Taos County, TaosNet has had this redundancy in place for the past three years. If Mr Ferguson had TaosNet’s reliable fixed wireless service to his house, he would have been unaffected by this outage for his Internet connection. So while TaosNet customers continued to have service, cell phones, ATMs and other services relying on the Century Link fiber were down. While Century Link probably does not feel that the cost of building a redundant system with enough capacity out of Taos is economical in a rural area like Taos County, TaosNet has built a redundant system that works. Being a locally owned and operated family run business, TaosNet knows and cares about our community and has taken the initiative to provide a redundant system. This value to businesses and residents alike is huge in this age where so much of our business and personal lives are inexorably tied to the Internet, for better or for worse. A case in point is Taos Ski Valley, which like most businesses today processes credit cards over the Internet. Had TaosNet not had the back up system in place, they would have had problems processing credit cards for ticket sales this morning.
Sincerely,
John

(The letter below was written by a Gary Ferguson, a reader to an official at the state of New Mexico, John Hooper.)

Hello John,

As I write this email, using a 24k phone modem, CenturyLink has isolated Taos and Northern NM without DSL and cell service for 14 hours and the latest estimate for restoring service is late today. The rumor has it that there is a fiber optic failure 17 miles east of here.

Please, if you can, motivate CL to install some redundant links to this part of the state. Certainly there is reliable service to Los Alamos which is not far away.

Also, CL could have a repair facility and equipment closer than SF or ABQ. They ignored us for 12 hours and finally, this am, dispatched a service crew to come fix the problem. Will they credit our accounts for this downtime? Likely no.

First there was the Gas Co who failed to serve northern NM and now CL.

Doesn’t seem fair at all.

Thanks for your help and attention.

Gary Ferguson.